


Behind the Curtain

by bobbiewickham



Series: Less Miserable [3]
Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 11:34:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7756201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobbiewickham/pseuds/bobbiewickham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fantine learns some things she never suspected about Zéphine--and about Tholomyès.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind the Curtain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PilferingApples](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PilferingApples/gifts).



> Thanks to genarti and ratheralark for reading this over, and also to genarti for helping me with the title!

Fantine unwound her scarf, and fanned herself with its fringed end. The night had been cool outside, with a pleasant breeze, but inside this candlelit parlor, it was stuffy. Between the smoke from the candles and the pipes, and all the people seated on cushions and chairs, and the bad wine everyone sipped at for lack of anything better to do until the performances started—everything contributed to the stillness and the heat.

She perched uncomfortably on a wooden stool, and cast her eye around the room for a free cushion. But they all were taken, by the strange bearded men and the scandalous women who attended this sort of party.

Zéphine had said it wasn’t a party at all, but a sort of show, where people would recite poetry and sing songs and perform scenes from new plays. Zéphine herself would be playing a part in a scene written by some law student she knew, who had abandoned his studies to write.

Zéphine had looked a little shy when she’d told Fantine about this, and shyer still when she’d said Fantine could come watch. “Only if you want,” Zéphine said, with an emphatic shrug of her shoulders. “You probably will want to go out with Tholomyès, or else Cosette will need you—”

It was that, more than anything else, that had decided Fantine. “I can go out with Tholomyès the day after,” she’d said, “and I’ll ask my neighbor to watch Cosette.” Zéphine had smiled widely, and then shrugged again, and then hurriedly begun to talk of a new dress she was thinking of buying.

So here Fantine was, uncomfortable and hot and tipsy, watching for Zéphine to come out. The performers were behind a deep red curtain, made from tattered velvet, which separated the parlor from the kitchen, waiting in anticipation of…whatever it was they were going to do.

To be honest, Fantine was dreading it more than looking forward to it. Zéphine and her clever artistic friends always seemed to talk of such sad and dreary things. Fantine wasn’t expecting a nice love story or comedy. It would likely be a lot of moaning and groaning and sighing, and very few actual words. The songs would be more like shouting than music, and the poems—Fantine found poetry boring, unless it had a nice rhyme.

But Zéphine had looked so shy and sweet and so Fantine would watch, and pretend to be delighted. Even if the rough edge of the stool was digging into her thigh, and the wine tasted like vinegar.

The curtain stirred, and a man in a stained doublet and ill-fitting trousers came forth, to thunderous applause. Fantine hastily set her glass between her knees and clapped as well, so as not to seem rude.

He recited a poem. It was about a dead woman’s skull, and how it shone by moonlight like a pearl rolling out of the dark earth of the graveyard.

It did have a pleasant rhythm, a steadfast sort of rumble, like the tlot-tlot of a horse on the stones of an empty street. Fantine clapped at the end, not just out of politeness.

Next came a man with a fiddle, and a girl in a very tight violet dress with a particularly billowy skirt. Fantine didn’t think _she_ would wear a dress like that, but she forgot all about the dress when the girl started to sing. The song was about a very bloody duel between two knights of old, and the fiddle was scratchy, but the girl’s voice—it was deep and clear and pure. Fantine ignored the words and the fiddle. She finished her wine, and as the tipsiness took hold, she let the voice wash over her, and felt cold and bereft when the song was replaced by silence.

But not for long, because Zéphine was next.

The playwright, a redheaded man with broad shoulders and patches on his knees, stepped forward to explain that this scene was from his play about…Fantine stopped paying attention when he told them the story. But the scene itself was about the hero getting into a quarrel with his sweetheart, who was furious at him for refusing to fight a duel with a man who had done something very wrong (Fantine didn’t know what, she’d stopped paying attention again).

Zéphine was playing the role of the sweetheart. She wore a cape over her dress, which must have been unbearably hot. Maybe that, and not excitement, was why her face was flushed.

She didn’t speak at all for the first two minutes. The hero stalked back and forth, making a long, eloquent speech. He was in the middle of a sentence when Zéphine burst in, with a wrathful speech of her own. Fantine looked up sharply, with a half-suppressed gasp. If she didn’t know better, she wouldn’t have recognized Zéphine. Zéphine’s face was contorted and splotched, its usual pleasant half-smile dissolved into rage and grief and bitterness. She wasn’t pretty anymore. She hardly looked like a girl at all. Her face might have been a sad old man’s, or a screaming child’s.

Fantine sat bolt upright, her body rigid, not taking her eyes off Zéphine. The hero remonstrated and tried to calm his sweetheart, but he might as well not have been there. Fantine paid him no mind.

When it was all over, Fantine sagged, as if some sort of string holding her up had been cut. Then she slid off her stool, feeling she couldn’t bear to sit still anymore. For lack of anything better to do, she went to the back of the room where there was a table laden with jugs of wine, and poured herself some. But after another glass, the room’s heat grew unbearable. Her cheeks burned, and she waited out the last two performers (another poet, followed by a bearded fellow who played the flute) with impatience, fanning herself all the while.

Fortunately, Zéphine didn’t want to linger much after it was all over; she was content to escape into the mercifully crisp night with Fantine.

She wouldn’t ask what Fantine had thought, of course, but Fantine didn’t wait for her to. “You were marvelous.” Her voice came out softer and more tentative than she had wanted it to—but somehow Fantine found herself feeling shy about this. Which was silly—she’d known Zéphine felt shy about it, but why on earth should _she_?

“Thank you,” said Zéphine, with a sudden flash of a smile. She looked away, unable to keep Fantine’s gaze. They walked in silence for a few moments, before Zéphine said, “I almost told them I wouldn’t do it.”

“What?”

Zéphine shrugged. “I almost said no, when Étienne asked me—and then even after I said yes, I almost kept it a secret from you. I hadn’t meant to tell you, I just—did, somehow.”

“Well,” said Fantine, “I’m glad you did! What a thing to keep secret!”

Zéphine shrugged again—it was an annoying gesture, maddeningly dismissive, and Fantine was beginning to feel sick of it—but her lips turned upwards as she said, “I’m glad, too.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” said Fantine, when she reached her street. Tholomyès and Fameuil and the others had planned a surprise for them. 

“Good night.” For a moment Zéphine stood still in the moonlight, which silvered her skin and made her dark hair glimmer. She looked like a girl out of a fairy tale, stepping into an enchanted kingdom; then she slipped into the shadows and was gone.

Fantine climbed the stairs to her apartment, stopping one floor below to retrieve Cosette from her neighbor. She did her best to step gently so she wouldn’t wake Cosette, but it was no good. Cosette blinked her large blue eyes open, and gurgled softly, and Fantine laughed, and cuddled her close.

***

The next day, when the men revealed their _surprise_ , the four girls stood looking at the note for one long moment in silence.

“Well,” said Favourite, finally, “all the same, it’s a good joke.”

“It’s very funny,” said Zéphine, brightly, and her face was the usual lovely girlish mask, no tears, no lines of pain or flush of anger, no twitch of muscle in the cheek.

That mask—that _absence_ of something she’d seen before, something she knew existed—might have been what jarred Fantine into speech. “No,” she said, with uncharacteristic emphasis, “it’s _not._ ”

It wasn’t. To lie like that—and what would happen to her, to Cosette? She’d write to Tholomyès, surely he would help them, even if he had to leave—she had thought he’d never leave, she’d thought he loved her—

Silence again. Zéphine colored, and looked away, while Dahlia gave Fantine a long, thoughtful look. Then Favourite gave a harsh laugh. “You must learn not to take these things so seriously, my dear.”

“Why should she not?” Zéphine turned back sharply. “They lied to us, and played a cruel trick on us—and now Fantine is left alone with Cosette! Do you imagine Tholomyès will send a single sou back for her?”

Favourite made a face. “She’ll soon find someone else.”

Fantine had been trying not to cry, but at the mention of Cosette, she couldn’t help it. She began to sob. Zéphine came over to her side, and slipped an arm around her shoulder. “What a horrible trick, to tell us they’re giving us a surprise, and then to do _that_!” Zéphine scowled. “I just wish I could tell those rascals what I think of them.”

“We might still,” said Dahlia, who had been quiet until then—but she had said _we_ , which made Fantine look up at her. “They’ve not been gone an hour, and one of the diligences to Toulouse has been delayed while the horse is looked over, and it has empty spaces—” She jerked her head, gesturing out the window.

“How ridiculous!” Favourite laughed again. “My dear, it will cost money to take a diligence, money we’re all short on, especially since the surprise has turned out like this—”

“I have enough for my fare to the inn they’ll stop at tonight, and back,” interjected Zéphine. “And a little bit extra to lend, if someone else wants to come.”

Favourite snorted. “If you wish to make a fool of yourself, by all means, go on, but I won’t be coming with you.”

“I’ll go,” Fantine said, surprising herself. But Cosette was with the neighbor again for the whole day, and Fantine didn’t like to let Zéphine go alone, and…well, she was curious. Curious to see what Zéphine would say; curious to see what she herself would; curious to see Tholomyès’s face when they said it.

"Then I won't--but you should go quickly,” said Dahlia. “Otherwise it will leave without you. And—”

“And what?” Fantine had risen to her feet, and was hovering by the door, ready to be off.

Dahlia crossed her arms over her chest. “Come find us when you get back. I want to hear about it.”

Fantine paused for a moment, surprised at Dahlia’s seriousness. “I will,” she said, and turned on her heel, to run for the diligence with Zéphine. 


End file.
